On 10 and 11 October, more than 200 indigenous persons from Chiapas met in Acteal, Chenalhó, Mexico, for the Forum on “The Other Justice” organized by the Las Abejas Civil Society, the X’INICH Committee for the Defense of Freedom, and Peoples United in Defense of Electrical Energy (PUDEE). The meeting served to “continue on the path of The Other Justice and to reconstruct our memory due to the pain we have confronted as victims of the counterinsurgent war. We will share our experiences from our cultures within a context of impunity.” The forum, which was organized with three meetings, ended in Acteal with the participation of members of national and international social organizations and “survivors and relatives [of survivors] of the war in the Northern Zone, Viejo Velasco, Banavil, the Primero de Agosto community, as well as other peoples who lived impunity in their own bodies, to speak and reaffirm our words and construct Lekil Chapanel and Bats’il meltsanel, that is to say, Dignified Justice, True Justice, which is righteous and humane.”

In their pronunciation participants declared that “due to such impunity, lies, cynicism, and hypocrisy on the part of the government, our eyes were opened and our ears began to hear the cries due to injustice, such that our heart and thought tell us that True Justice, dignified, long-lasting, humane, and righteous will not be given by the bad government.” Beyond this, they recognized that they must “struggle together without concern for cultural differences, or those related to age, profession, work, or religion. Only by walking together will we reach The Other Justice that is for women, men, children, students, workers of the city and countryside, migrants, lesbians, gays, and trans* individuals […] for all those who are humiliated, discriminated against, and oppressed and repressed by the neoliberal capitalist system.”

In a communique published on 21 June, the organization Peoples United for the Defense of Electricity (PUDEE) denounced that the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) suspended service on 17 June to residents in 14 communities from the Tila municipality, northern zone of Chiapas. Some of the affected homes find themselves in a position of resistance to paying for electricity, due to high prices.

In light of these events, PUDEE has reported increased “tensions in the communities that struggle and resist to defend their rights” and that “amidst the situation and the rise in violence that could take place in the communities of the northern zone, we hold the three levels of government responsible.”

PUDEE indicated that “if it is this way that CFE will treat the communities in resistance, we will organize ourselves by means of the self-determination of our peoples. The way they are privatizing the electricity, we too will privatize our lands, and the CFE will have to pay us for the use of our lands. If this does not happen, they can take their light-posts and transformers. We will not allow them to plunder our land, which belonged to our parents and is for our children.”

On June 16, a caravan of relatives and comrades of the disappeared and murdered students from Ayotzinapa arrived to Chiapas to meet with indigenous communities organized within the National Indigenous Congress (CNI) who adhere to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandona Jungle. Doña Bertha Nava and Don Tomás Ramírez, the parents of Julio César Ramírez Nava, who was murdered on September 26, 2014 in Iguala, Guerrero, Doña Cristina Bautista Salvador, mother of Benjamín Ascencio Bautista (disappeared), and Omar García, a student from the Rural Normal School, comprised the caravan. The caravan began its first day in the community of San Francisco, municipality of Teopisca, with the participation of Semilla Digna, a collective from the Chiapas highlands, the Network in Defense of Indigenous Peoples of the Highlands of Chiapas, and the Las Abejas Civil Society. Omar García noted that “Ayotzinapa has united many of us, and if we are not all against the system, we still work together, because we do not count ourselves by number, but rather by strength of relationships that are weaved in this struggle.” Regarding the pain of Acteal, he said, “what you have suffered, we too have suffered. Now we must confront that pain, together, with you.”

On June 17, the caravan continued onto San Sebastián Bachajón, municipality of Chilón, with the presence and participation of members organized in the ejido of San Sebastián Bachajón, representatives of communities that make up the People United in Defense of Electrical Energy (PUDEE) and the ejido of Tila. In Cumbre Nachoj, the headquarters of the ejido where the meeting took place, Doña Berta expressed that “in Tixtla Guerrero, we thought it was just us, but all of us have been beaten down by the government in one way or another.” The conclusion of the caravan took place in Palenque with the organization XINICH that is comprised of indigenous communities of the northern Lacandon jungle, ejidatarios from San Sebastián Bachajón, the Autonomous Council of the Coastal Zone, human-rights defenders, and the civil society in solidarity, demanding justice for Ayotzinapa and also for the case of the massacre in the Viejo Velasco community in the Ocosingo municipality that continues in impunity and took place in 2006.

On 19 August, the organizational process Peoples United for the Defense of Electricity (PUDEE) which adheres to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandona Jungle published a communique in which its members analyze and criticize the impacts of the newly approved structural reforms. The communique describes the “ways in which they will steal from us: first, they will demand that we accept PROCEDE or FANAR, and if we do not, they will deny us access to governmental programs such as Procampo, productive aid, social support—all this for accepting PROCEDE. This step opens the door to the privatization of lands; it would cancel the documents that ejidos possess as presidential resolutions, in addition to the founding charter and the plan governing the distribution of ejidal lands […]. Those who accept PROCEDE would supposedly have the chance to take out loans from the banks, like Azteca Bank, Prendamex, etc. But when one takes out these loans, they will charge you super-high interest rates, and you will not be able to pay back the capital amount. Once you have defaulted, they will sell your lands—that is to say, they will loot you. There will be no one to help you, because with the PROCEDE program there will no longer be an Ejidal Commissioner, nor will there be ejidal meetings. If you have problems, you are obliged to hire a lawyer, if you have money, but if you don’t, other people will come for your land, because that surely has money.”

The communique continues: “They will pay you 7 pesos per hour, for precisely that was it that the deputies and senators approved the labor reform […]. It is true that the government of Enrique Peña Nieto constantly travels to the U.S., Europe, and Asia to offer up our natural resources: they make deals with the big banks, transnational corporations, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Trade Organization […]. On our lands will they come to establish tourist centers, large hotels, large commercial centers, and they will open highways and build airports and trainways, as they exist in the U.S. and Japan. This will all be done to extract the natural resources they desire.”

With regard to the defense of electricity, PUDEE mentions that “they will come to loot the ejidal lands to build the dams that will generate much energy, and then we will export this to Central America, the U.S., and Canada. The energy that we will consume will be very expensive for us. They will install digital monitors so that we cannot know how much we are consuming; they steal from us shamelessly; they will change the electricity cables, transformers, and everything, resulting in the pollution of the land, because when these are heated by the sun, they produce radiation that can cause cancer or otherwise harm our health […]. It is calculated that each commercial center will use more than 1000 lightbulbs, as for example in Elektra, Soriana, Aurrera, Coopel, etc. These corporations consume electricity 365 days a year; they never turn off their lights, not even for a second, because then they would lose profits. They are not worried whether or not we have electricity; instead, they are planning so that their business does not lack electrical inputs.”

The communique ends with the following thought: “This is all taken toward the end of converting us into isolated individuals without any social ties at all, without land or a neighborhood—dependent [upon the State] for food and work, so that in this way we are left without an alternative to becoming cheap and fungible labor.”

On May 24, in La Realidad, Chiapas and in many parts of Mexico and the world, a tribute to the Zapatista support base José Luis Solís López, alias “Galeano,” will be performed. Galeano was killed in La Realidad on 2 May. For several weeks, statements and actions of solidarity have been organized.

This past week, Chol and Tsotsil organizations and communities of the Northern Zone and of the Highlands regions of Chiapas have joined the protests. The United People in Defense of Electrical Energy (PUDEE), adherent to the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, in the Northern Region, proclaimed in a statement that “We are all Galeano,” and that: “It is the same way and strategy that was used in the Northern region of Chiapas with the low-intensity warfare, which was operated through [the paramilitary group] Peace and Justice. There are still witnesses, survivors and victims’ families in the communities, that were victims of this counterinsurgency and extermination warfare. This strategy was designed in the 94 Plan of Campaign for Chiapas, and implemented by the Mexican government after the armed uprising of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) in 1994. Such a strategy resulted in dozens of forced disappearances, murders, forced displacement, sexual violence and massacres; all crimes against humanity that remain unpunished. (…) This is why we condemn the violence in autonomous regions nowadays. “

Also from the Northern zone, members of the Committee for the Defense of Indigenous Freedom (Xinich) stressed that “We understand these events as an attack against our organized people and against all the indigenous peoples that are struggling for freedom and peace. Furthermore, these actions are performed in order to plunder the wealth that runs through the veins of our mother land and our natural resources. We have protected and taken care of what has belonged to our people for millennia.”

From the Highlands of Chiapas, on May 22, the Las Abejas Civil Society held a day of prayer and fasting in the framework of the monthly commemoration of the massacre of Acteal. In a statement, it denounced ‘the paramilitary aggression against our Zapatista brothers and sisters and the killing of Galeano. It is very clear that this is the product of the dirty war or counterinsurgency war in Chiapas, designed since 1994. We already know the speeches or rather the lies of the the bad governments: when their paramilitaries massacre women and children, they say that “they were confrontations” due to “inter-community conflicts.” And when these liars and criminals are politically challenged and pressured by international men and women, once again they make a speech or a lie to try to convince, saying that the government “condemns the regrettable facts and will apply the full weight of the law against those responsible “etc”.’

On 7 December, the United People in Defense of Electrical Energy (PUDEE) published a denunciation regarding harassment targeting members of this movement in El Limar, Tila municipality, on the part of the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE). The members of PUDEE protest the high electricity prices which they receive–from 5,000 to 10,000 per month–and so refuse to pay. The public denunciation notes that ‘THE FEDERAL ELECTRICITY COMMISSION (CFE) HAS PRESSURED US TO PAY THE HIGH PRICE OF ELECTRICITY CONSUMPTION. WHEN THERE ARE PROBLEMS OF SUPPLY OF ELECTRICITY, THEY BLAME US. THEY DO NOT ATTEND TO PROBLEMS OF SUPPLY OR CHANGE OUR THE FLAWED TRANSFORMERS; THEY OFFER BAD SERVICE. ON 13 AUGUST 2013, PERSONNEL FROM THE CFE ARRIVED TO THE COMMUNITY TO INSTALL NEW MEASUREMENT DEVICES WITHOUT OUR CONSENT. THEY ARRIVED SCARED, REQUESTED THE SUPPORT OF THE EJIDAL COMMISSIONER AND DESIRED THAT MUNICIPAL POLICE ACCOMPANY THEM IN THE COMMUNITY TO PERFORM THE INSTALLATION. BUT THE AUTHORITIES ABSTAINED. THEY HAVE CAUSED US TO PROTEST, WE WHO RESIST PAYING FOR ELECTRICITY.”

On 7 April, the organization United Peoples in Defense of Electricity (PUDEE) released a communique denouncing the behavior of personnel from the parastatal Federal Electricity Commisison (CFE), following its cutting of electrical energy to several residents of the Emiliano Zapata community in the zone below Tila. PUDEE indicated that, beyond cutting electricity, a CFE worker entered the land of a PUDEE member without permission, and when the property-owner attempted to block his entrance, the worker “raised his hand with the intent of beating him on the head.” Before the CFE workers left, they warned the residents that “soon we will return to continue [with] mass-electricity cuts,” perhaps accompanied by the police, and they “threatened arrest-orders and the carrying out of electricity cuts in the neighboring community of Paso Chinal and the communities below Tila.” In the denunciation, PUDEE expresses that “the ejidal and communal authorities are worried,” because the CFE is creating conflicts. PUDEE found the leaders of the three levels of government responsible for whatever may follow, denouncing that “it is they who now are reactivating paramilitary groups and sowing terror, fabricating crimes and harassment, and administering threats of arrest-orders against the people.”